The new Featured Writer is Stephen Bone with his enigmatic poetry collection In the Cinema published by Playdead Press. As a matter of fact, I was really chuffed that Stephen contacted me to ask if he could be featured as this happens only rarely (that I get asked). I didn’t know anything about Stephen Bone so looked him up on various websites (of which there were several, not just mine) and I found a variety of reviews, all of them admiring different poems in the pamphlet. So…a mix of opinions! Stephen only sent me a picture of the cover of his book and said very little about himself when I asked for a ‘bit of a biography’. Playdead Press looked curious also. Stephen’s voice had come to me out of the virtual world of the internet and seemed disembodied: no picture and the screen on the cover of his book empty! (He seemed a bit like a Graham Greene figure)
I don’t know what any of this means but it’s very intriguing as are the stunning poems he sent me, the image of the cinema screen on the cover of his book, the surreal effect of the deft observation of detail, making characters and objects seem freeze-framed. I found further extracts that really made me catch my breath:As if
a piece of tomorrow
had worked its way free
or broken off
and waits
cocksure
for the rest
to follow

And in another poem:He phoned
his grandmother
to fetch him early
Rained off, he sulked
not hearing the flatness
in her voice
…
Her eyes were red
and she was wearing
more powder than usual

I think the best thing I can do is to leave you to read the three poems and study the image of the cover of In the Cinema. Thank you, Stephen, for contacting me and hope one day I will meet you or hear your poems.

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About Rebecca Gethin

Rebecca Gethin is a poet and a novelist. Cinnamon Press published her third collection, All the Time in the World in 2017. Another pamphlet is forthcoming with Three Drops Press. Her second novel, What the horses heard, was published by Cinnamon Press in May 2014. Her second poetry collection - A Handful of Water - was published by Cinnamon in 2013. Her first - River is the Plural of Rain - was published by Oversteps Books in 2009. Her novel Liar Dice won the Cinnamon Press Novel Writing Award in 2010 and was published in 2011. She lives on Dartmoor and writes occasional pieces about wildlife and nature. Her poems appear in a variety of poetry magazines and in several anthologies.

6 Responses to Stephen Bone – In the Cinema

Very impressed with these poems and their meticulous and concise attention to detail. The Attic in particular creates such a vivid picture – loved the abacus subtracting beads and the flock of shuttlecocks – and that last line which seems to me to be a poignant metaphor for life and death.